LETTERS: Vote no: project is too large, too expensive

Friday

Feb 28, 2014 at 2:00 AM

Members of the Greater Hyannis Civic Association have spent a great deal of time studying the plans for the proposed Hyannis Fire Station.

Patriot Staff

Members of the Greater Hyannis Civic Association have spent a great deal of time studying the plans for the proposed Hyannis Fire Station. The conclusion that they reached is that the proposed station is too large and too expensive.

The current fire station contains a total of 17,166 square feet of useable space, 8,907 square feet for administrative functions, 7,328 square feet for the apparatus garage and 931 square feet for the mechanic bay. There is no doubt that this is inadequate for the current needs of the fire department. However, the building committee has gone far beyond reality in approving a fire station that contains 42,695 square feet of space. The proposed building that will come before the fire district rate payers on Wednesday, March 5th, contains approximately 22,000 square feet of administrative space, an increase of about two and a half times the current administrative space. The apparatus space of about 13,000 square feet is almost twice the current space and the separate mechanics garage of 4,950 square feet is over five times as large as the space dedicated to this function currently.

The members of the Civic Association, who have studied this proposal, have found a number of ways that the size, and cost, of this new station can be reduced without, in any way, impacting the functionality or effectiveness of a new fire station.

We propose that the administrative section of the new station be constructed as a two-story, 18,000-square-foot building. This can easily be accomplished by consolidating some of the spaces in the proposed plan. For example, according to the fire department, there are 12 people on duty on each 24-hour shift. There is a captain, two lieutenants and nine firemen. During the day shift all personnel are required to be on the apparatus floor. At any other time, the captain has his own sleeping area, there are three firemen that are required to be on the apparatus floor in the "on call" room at all times, and there is one individual in the dispatch room at all times. This leaves a potential of a maximum of seven people who could be utilizing the bunk rooms. Why, then, do the plans show sleeping accommodations for 20 people? By reducing the 10 double-bunk rooms to seven, we can save about 600 square feet of space.

The plans also show a day room, a kitchen, a library and a fitness room of over 2,000 square feet. This is a total area larger than many single-family homes in the Hyannis Fire District. Consolidation of these spaces could easily save another 1,000 square feet of space. There are a plethora of other areas of the proposed fire station that can be revised or consolidated to reduce the administrative space needs to fit the 18,000-square-foot building that, we feel, will serve all of the needs of the fire department administrative functions, not only for the present but also for years to come.

The apparatus space, as proposed, contains eight bays. The building committee has been told that this space is needed for future expansion. There is, in fact, an excess of two bays in this plan. If we reserve one bay for expansion, and use the other bay for the mechanic, there is no need to construct the proposed 4,950-square-foot separate garage.

How, then, does this affect the cost of a new fire station? By all reasonable estimates of recognized construction cost guides, the administrative section of this station should be able to be built for $400 per square foot at a maximum. At a total of 8,000 square feet, this should result in a cost of $7,200,000 for the administrative section of the station. If the apparatus bay of 13,000 square feet is constructed utilizing steel frame construction at a maximum of $150 per square foot, then the cost of this portion of the building should be in the $1,950,000 range at a maximum. This would result in a total cost for a new fire station of just over $9,000,000, not the close to $20,000,000 proposed by the Hyannis Fire Department Building Committee!

We are extremely disappointed in the actions of the fire department building committee in not considering some of these rather obvious suggestions. For example, the fire department and their architects have said that a steel frame building is not suitable for the apparatus bays while at the same time saying that they would be agreeable to using this technology for the mechanic’s 5,000-square-foot building. It seems that the committee has been more inclined to agree with any request by the fire department and has not been protective of the interests of the rate payers of the Hyannis Fire District.

We would therefore urge the voters of the Hyannis Fire District to vote no on March 5th, and to urge the Hyannis Fire Commissioners to reconstitute a new building committee to bring forth a reasonably priced, functional fire station for the Hyannis Fire District.

Bill Cronin Hyannis

The writer is president of the Greater Hyannis Civic Association.

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